I was assigned to reflect on Marin’s digital portfolio. I liked the layout she used, it was user-friendly and very clean. Everything in her portfolio was clearly organized and had titles. Her writing is very good and interesting to read. Her appeal was to logos and gave the information that the reader would need. I thought this project was very interesting and gave us a chance to be creative while also going back through our old work. I liked seeing what everybody came up with and what appeals were used. Marin’s portfolio was more on the plain side and focused more on information and details than it focused on theme and pictures. I think she did a good job getting her point across and I enjoyed this portfolio project.
http://jmb13w.weebly.com
Digital Portfolio link
Out of Class Internet Research
Jessica Baskies
Out of Class Writing Assignment-Portfolio’s
After looking through several portfolio’s I found a number of different themes and varieties. I tried to keep it limited to writing portfolio’s but I also came across some interesting other ones which completely ranged in ideas. My top three writing portfolio’s that I chose to reflect on are:
http://luisramosfinalportfolio.weebly.com/index.html
http://camrynnealfinalportfolio.weebly.com
http://stevenceliportfolio.weebly.com/reflection.html
These are all blogs I sorted out on Weebly, I chose to focus on blogs on this website because this is the website I’m going to use to make my portfolio so it is helpful to focus in on how people utilized whats available on it.
The first blog I chose is by Luis Ramos and he is a Sophomore at UCF. I chose this portfolio to write about because it was ascetically my favorite one. The layout is very clean and I absolutely love the themes he chose to use. Everything he did with the layout looks fantastic in my opinion and highly appeals to pathos. He also does a good job in using ethos because he is genuinely a good writer. It is easy to read his work and his stories came off as interesting as opposed to a drag. Another appeal he made to pathos was the layout, it was extremely easy to navigate and the colors he used for the titles against the brown background stood out. His appeal to logos, although only a few, were the sources he gave and some of the downloadable files that were attached to his blog. All in all this was my favorite portfolio that I came across due to layout and his high appeal to pathos.
The next portfolio I chose is by Camryn and this was my least favorite portfolio that I came across for writing. Camryn is also a student at UCF and I think this portfolio fails to appeal to pathos. All of the backgrounds are white and the text is grey on top of it, it is terribly boring to look at and there is no reason for the portfolio to be so plain. Camryn also puts all of her information into just four tabs and I think this could have been organized better. Due to the low peal to pathos it makes the appeal to ethos less credible also. I give her less credibility as an author because as soon as I came across her blog I didn’t have much interest in reading it. Her claims to logos are in her research drafts which are also organized kind of strangely.
The last portfolio I chose to write about is Steven Celi’s. Steven is also a student in ENC at UCF. Obviously again for me the first thing I notice is the appeal to pathos and this blog is different to me. It is very undone but in a good way. He doesn’t try to overdue it and he sticks to a more plain theme but at the same time it looks clean and easy to read. So overall I think he actually has a very strong appeal to pathos and I like how plain and simple he kept it. His appeal to logos and ethos is shown by the links he provides for sources. He posted a youtube link to show where he got his video’s from and he included downloadable files which were easy to find and went with everything he was writing about to help the reader along.
Although I did not end up choosing three blogs that may seem completely different because they are all from UCF students, in my opinion they are completely different. The blogs range in appeals in very different ways. I am a very visual person so an appeal to pathos is going to be most appealing to me. Luis’ blog really caught my eye and from that on it was very easy and fun to read making it seem credible and appeal to all three. Then I chose to include a blog like Camryn’s to show that as soon as pathos is affected negatively, everything else is too. When I look at such a plain blog it makes me question why she didn’t spend more time on it and for what reason the layout doesn’t work. I ended up spending more time picking apart her appeal to pathos that it made it even harder to want to pick up on her appeals to ethos and logos. And I chose a blog like Steven’s to show how even a mild appeal to pathos will help the rest of the portfolio. Doing my research on student blogs really helped show me what is important to me when building a portfolio and now I know how important an appeal to pathos really is.
Literature Review
Jessica Baskies
Canter
ENC1145
29 October 2013
Literature Review
When you hear the word “sports” the first things that tend to come to mind are games, players, fans, and a good time. Very rarely is the word “sports” associated with writing. Sports writing is a career path that is only growing stronger as the years go on. From newspapers to multimedia, sports writing exists. My main goal for this paper is to take a look into not only how sports writing affects the sports industry, but also the affect that the sports industry has on sports writing.
“Only 100 years ago, sports writing did not even exist” (Saunderson). For such s major impact that sports writing has on people today, it’s almost impossible to believe that just one hundred years ago it did not exist. One of the only ways of attaining information about an event was by attending it, making it much harder to be a fan to multiple teams. Saunderson touches on how some of the most memorable sports moments are remembered by the way they were written about. It seems surprising that such a huge focus for so many now is just a recent phenomenon. Over the past one hundred years sports writing has evolved itself into a career for “some of the very best writers of any kind” (Saunderson).
Although it may seem that sports writing works on a game to game basis, it doesn’t always have to be about the latest and greatest games. Authors dating all the way back to Ernest Hemingway and Marianne Moore incorporated sports into their writings constantly. ““Moore once composed a poem called “Baseball and Writing,” which explained that “baseball is like writing./You can never tell with either/how it will go.”” These authors valued sports and it was a part of their lives which was reflected through their writings. Although their main focus was not sports writing, it helped them write some of their most famous pieces. Chuck Leddy notes that “There are essential similarities between writing and sports.” Both intertwine to make great masterpieces. “Sports is always about drama, so little wonder writers turn to it for material.”
Knowlton and Freeman make it very apparent that not just anybody can watch a game, pick up a pen, and call themselves a sports writer. This is actually a very highly competitive field and those who make it are far and few between. Sports are an extremely important area of millions of people’s lives and not just anybody can write about such an intense topic and make the words have meaning. “The sports pages need especially good writing because in many instances, the readers already know the lead of the article – who won – before they pick up the paper,” meaning that you have to make a great story out of something that almost everybody knows the ending to. This is a much harder task than it seems. It is very important for a sportscaster to write about games on an unbiased basis, otherwise people will believe the data is skewed towards the favored team and it can even be unenjoyable for fans to read if they do not favor the same team, “the appearance of honesty in journalism is as important as the honesty itself.”
Sports writing doesn’t only exist to entertain, it also is used to persuade and inform. There are so many layers to sports writing from newspapers to magazines to television to advertisements. A very famous example of influential sports writing was in 2001, according to Ben Reiter, author of “The New New Fenway,” Tom Yawkey wanted to rebuild Fenway Park in Boston Massachusetts. Unfortunately he soon passed away and the ownership of the Red Sox was up for grabs, one of the potential owners agreed with Yawkey’s plans and wanted to completely rebuild the park in South Boston. But the uproar that came with this idea made it hard for him to win the popular vote and John Henry and Larry Luccino subsequently became owners of the Boston Red Sox franchise. Without the backlash of media and sports writers ability to produce opinions on the deal, Fenway Park could have easily been torn down and thousands would be left devastated without a say.
It is important for fans to have an outlet to share their opinions. Fans want to be involved with the sports just as much as the athletes do. According to Tavakolli, Najafi, and Ramezani, “Mass media is an important means of sports development,” without media the number of fans would decrease because they would have no other way to keep up with the games if they were not able to watch them. Sports writing keeps millions of people in tune with what is going on every day and enables people to keep up with every single game.
The article “Divided Loyalty?” takes another completely different aspect of sports writing and turns it into a reality, fantasy sports. Every single day fantasy sports are being played and most teams are for money. In the article studies revealed that the more involvement someone has in fantasy football, the more likely they are to be highly involved with the National Football League. Meaning fantasy sports are leading to even more sports fans and this is a phenomenon that will most likely continue into the future. Some sports writers focus their entire careers on fantasy sports, they do this by projecting points for specific players by analysis and guiding people to pick the best teams possible for each upcoming game of any fantasy sport. Fantasy football is the most common fantasy sport played and people rely on sports writers opinions to determine how to make the best fantasy team possible.
The influence of sports writing in the media world today is just getting stronger. Sports writing affects sports on their own, books, newspapers, publishings, and lives on a daily basis. Sports writing has the ability to keep readers coming back for more and give fans a way to be constantly updated on the sport or team they love. Sports writing also gives people the chance to have a spoken opinion and even make a difference in the future of the sports evolution. In this paper I intend to further look into what fully makes the sports industry what it is today. I plan to look into well known publishers and research the affects that they have on their readers. I will find data that supports how the industry has changed and evolved over the years due to the influence of media.
Chapter 3 Reflection
I think writing as you read is a good trick, but it’s harder than it sounds. When you’re buried in research and need to find more it’s hard to want to sit and take notes on everything you read. First you need to find a source, then you have to semi-like it, then you need to validate it and then after all of that you can use it in your paper. You already know it’s a good source so why go back and read it again to take notes on it when you could be finding even more sources? This is where I think the disconnect lies in this situation, although it seems like a good idea in theory and the author swears by it, I don’t know if people are willing to necessarily put in the extra work to do it. I think his huge chunk of the chapter on plagarism may have also been a little unnecessary. Plagarism is extremely important and it does matter, but it is something that is drilled into everyones brain from the age of about 14 not to do. Especially once you reach college and have to spend whole days on learning about it, the information was repetitive and boring at times.
Chapter 2 Reflection
I thought this chapter was pretty interesting… Certainly long, but still worth reading. It was nice to see how well Google actually played out as a valuable research tool among the others in the studies conducted. I also didn’t know that you were able to do a Boleen search on Google which I’m glad I learned about also. Some of the information in this chapter was repetitive and could have been cut down a lot but for the most part the key strategies were important. The author continued to write about quality sources which was also good to know, I didn’t know before that posts published more recently were more credible then posts from years ago, and I also didn’t know about how much better journal articles were for a paper over magazine articles. All in all the research strategies and different ways to go about finding what I need for my paper was extremely helpful.
Revised Research Question
How do major sports teams affect a city and its income?
Research Question (Draft)
What are the biggest money generator’s for the city of Boston?
Exercise 1.1
PLACES TRENDS THINGS TECHNOLOGIES
-Boston –Clothing -Fishing pole –Computer
–Boca Raton -iPhone –Water –TV
–Tallahassee –Pen -iPhone
–Lake
PEOPLE CONTROVERSIES HISTORY
-Mom –Syria -World War 2
-Dad -Gun Control –American Revolution
–Jon
–Jennifer Aniston
-Brantley Gilbert
-Luke Bryan
JOBS HABITS HOBBIES
-Players Edge -biting nails -fishing
–Athlete – –tennis
Boston-
- Is it a safe town?
- What is the history?
- Are there a lot of people?
- How many sports teems are in the city?
- What is the city’s biggest money generator?
- Did the bombings have a big impact on the city?
- Where do people live?
- Do people recommend the city?
- Is it a good vacation spot?
- Is there a lot to do?
- Is there any night life?
- How many colleges are in the city?
- Are there any bodies of water?
- Is it diverse?
- Are people nice?
- How many restaurants?
- Are there job opportunities?
- Where is it?
- Is it an expensive city?
Literacy Narrative Revision
Jessica Baskies
Canter
ENC1145
8 September 2013
My Literacy Narrative (revision)
It all started when I was just five years old, sitting in my pre-school class room. Each day all of the students would break off into groups to learn how to read. Most would never read a whole “baby book” by the time they left pre-school, but some would, and I was determined to make it into that minority group. The series of books we’d repeatedly try to learn with were called “Bob Books.” They were tiny books with a good two words per page and pictures to explain the words. They were certainly pre-school level books, but I didn’t know this at the time. These tiny 6 page books I thought would be the death of me, I would study these books like a mad man. All I could think was, “how do the grown-ups read these so easily?” It was effortless for them, they knew every single word on every single page and I could not figure out how. Were they memorizing the words? Did they have a cheat sheet? Was there some sort of trick to all of this? Millions of questions ran through my head as I tried to decipher how to go about reading these things. Finally one day it all clicked for me, I can’t explain why or how but I know it did because I still have the certificate that reads “Jessica read her first Bob Book on: November 7th 2000.” And there it was, proof that I could read. A real life, paper official document, proving that I read that whole “Bob Book” all by myself, and this was just the beginning.
Although finishing that tiny little 12 word book seemed like one of the greatest things I ever could have done with my life, I quickly realized there was more to come. I finished one “Bob Book” and then suddenly there was a whole series of them to read. After the series there were more baby books, and then eventually when I reached elementary school there were even these strange things called chapter books. Chapter books became my next task to conquer. All the cool kids in Boston were reading them; I had to jump into the bandwagon. Sooner than I thought possible, I was reading them with a little help from my teachers and quickly enough on my own. I couldn’t believe it, how could something that looked so difficult become so easy? Just like all of the other kids I loved to read and it was something I was good at.
Unfortunately pretty soon the chapter books got really old, they became long and boring and I no longer wanted to be reading them. My love for reading disappeared when it started becoming things I no longer wanted to be reading. The assignments were too many pages and I could never keep up. I quickly realized I’d rather be playing in the snow than reading inside. Before I knew it, the books that I used to love and spend all my time with became the devil. I was only in third grade and I already started to hate reading. Growing up with an outdoorsy family didn’t translate well to the classroom for me. I lost focus easily and reading actually started to become difficult. As I was advancing in the amount of reading I was required to do, writing was getting harder also. I didn’t have to do as much writing so it didn’t bother me to the extent of the reading, but nothing in school seemed to be working out too well for me.
Once I reached middle school, everything started getting even harder. Now I had to write real essays and read whole books on my own time. This almost seemed foreign to me after being babied so much throughout elementary school. I wanted to do well so I would try and succeed only about half of the time. I would do what I was told for the most part because I knew my parents expected me to get good grades, which I managed to throughout middle school where crappy work could actually get you pretty far.
In high school everything changed again. Suddenly my half done work wasn’t cutting it in the slightest. I realized I would have to change my ways and learn how to re-love reading and writing again if I even wanted a chance at passing. My freshmen year was a big change but I did well, I did what my teachers asked and they understood the stress of the transition from middle school to high school. My sophomore teachers on the other hand, did not. Not reading my summer reading already got me started off with an F and that may sound like a wake-up call, but apparently not for me. I started to really lose all focus and care for school at all. My grades were slipping out of my control and I didn’t know how to stop it because I was so behind in all of my work. C’s started to become my average grade and I was constantly getting in trouble for it. I put minimal effort in to everything I did and my grades showed it. My teachers and parents were always unhappy with me and I didn’t want to change it because that required me doing more work. After sophomore year it was apparent to everyone and myself that I needed a change, so I dual enrolled myself in the local university, Florida Atlantic University, to take summer classes and get away from the high school environment I felt stuck in.
I finally found what felt like the answer to all of my problems. FAU was exactly what I needed to turn my schooling around. I needed to get out of the high school environment and be around people that cared more about school. FAU gave me the opportunity to take classes I was actually interested in and I got to study things I really cared about. I quickly realized a hatred for reading would get me no where and I worked on changing that by going to the FAU library and being around working students. I spent a majority of my time there through my junior and senior year of high school and my grades changed drastically. Reading became a part of my life again and it helped tremendously with studying. I finally enjoyed spending my time on school and in classes that I liked taking and it showed in every class I had.
By my senior year I felt as if I had it all figured out. I read every book assigned in my last year of high school and I did all of my work which lead to all A’s. I got into some really great schools including Florida State University and Boston University, and I finally knew all the hard work I put in was worth it.
Jesse's blog 